Faithless
by DawningAurora
Summary: Hyuga Hinata: Failure to Fire Lady. Dark!Fic AU.


Faithless

Hinata Hyuga: Failure to Fire Lady. Dark!Fic AU.

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Disclaimer: Yes. I own it.

A pair of laced woven ballerina-esque flats.. I wore out my first pair so I got another one.

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_Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat._

_Theodore Roosevelt_

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Hers is a losing heart. One that she hasn't allowed to feel since the first time she heard her father arrange an alliance with the Daimyo's son.

_It will be a perfect match,_ her cousins whispered gleefully to her as they arrange and converge around her in preparation.

They whispered of the great honor she was bringing to Konoha , to the clan and of the stability she was bringing to the Country.

The prestige of the clan.

The honor of the clan.

The Council's smug smiles as they sacrifice the anomaly, the obstacle and the solution to all their problems.

She swallows her heart then before she can lose it completely to the din of the unhearing clan.

_You should be glad,_ her father chides in the glacial tone that has become the only memento of her childhood, _glad of the chance to be a game changer. To be more than just an ill-fitting heiress. _

Hanabi will rise to the position of Heiress without the dishonor of having succeeded her elder.

Her tears go unheard but for the soft kiss of the teardrop and the wooden floor in the silence that has been her companion for the week following the arrangement.

_You will be the Fire Lady,_ he declaims another time,_ and you will refrain from failing me again. _

_Failure_.. The word chafes. It is harsh and brutal, belittling everything she had strived for.

(her blood, her pain, her tears over the years discounted, dismissed oh-so-easily).

She had become the epitome of everything she was- a strong kunoichi, a compassionate friend and the only thing that remained was a passionate lover.

She realized she was never going to fulfill that role, atleast not with her love of this lifetime- Naruto.

She thinks she breaks a little then.

She should have wept then, but feels nothing but a bone deep exhaustion. She feels numb, detached, dispassionate.

She is married to the Heir of the Daimyo in a ceremony that lasts for nine days. Nine, a sacred number for Konoha.

They giggle that The Imperium has never received a bride as beautiful as she, decked in her white wedding kimono. She is as unmoving and unmoved as a porcelain doll. The only time she makes any sound is when Naruto hugs her fiercely in his still oblivious manner and wishes her joy. The sound she makes is a half-strangled gasp of joy and a half moan of pain.

Her intended looks sharply at them and then fades into the background to play his political games.

He is charming at first, managing to draw a small smile from the solemn woman he wed. He sits beside her, courting and teasing. He is undemanding and oh-so-very-charming.

To make room for her reticence, their courtships lasts for months, with little more than the occasional kiss.

She warms to him, a measure of feeling returns. She knows as well as he does that she will never feel for him what she felt-no feels- for Naruto. They never talk about him.

She warms up to him, confiding. He returns her trust with childhood anecdotes and cheerful teasing. She is not blissfully happy but it is enough.

It is when she finally lets him, that they make love. He is as attentive a lover as he is a husband. A few months later, Hinata is unsure of her reaction when the royal physician announces that the Nursery must be kept ready.

In the same month as she, twin sons are born to her. Their grandfather finally makes a trip to see them. He is delighted. A Daimyo's favor was not easily received.

Hinata is uncaring of his reaction. Her husband announces to the world of the favor that Lady Luck has granted him.

The naming ceremony has the entire clan in attendance. They are appropriately respectful and traditionally cold.

Hinata is unsure of how to take the new status quo. Her father nods in approval but Hinata does not acknowledge him, eyes on the now disappeared husband of hers.

Her father appears before her, thin lines of disapproval lining his eyes and tautening his jawline. He commands her to join him for a drink.

She idly contemplates the enormous loss of face he would face if she refused him, as her rank would now allow her to. From his arrowed eyes, he can see it too and attempts to amend his tone, tightly leashed fury in his eyes.

She smiles a brittle smile and proceeds to go along with her father. They speak of the village, of Hanabi (who is away on a classified ANBU mission), and of the Hokage's successor.

Her heart is pounding and the fog clears suddenly as her invokes _his_ name. She lowers her eyes to her father's cup as she pours it for him.

A sizzle of understanding passes her mind's eye. He is testing her. He is testing to see if she is still in love with Naruto. To gauge if there is going to be a scandal or if she is going to dishonor her family name because of him.

When she looks back up at him, it with knowledge shining in old, old eyes. She smiles again in understanding. For a moment, just a bare heartbeat, he is her Father again. The man who had once, woven a charm to chase away the monsters under her bed, the man who had looked away as he gave his daughter away to the Daimyo.

The moment passed and so did her nostalgia. He was the Hyuga Patriarch once again and she was the Fire Lady.

She keeps her features as impassively as she does in court. There is a faint spark of approval in the eyes mirroring hers.

When the event is finished, so is his evaluation. They part at the gates as strangers.

She seeks her husband then, in order to observe if he had been the one to send her father to test her loyalty.

Unable to find him, she returns to his chambers to await him. As she reaches them, she notices the maid who frets nervously at the door. She dismisses the girl and the guilty flash in the woman's eyes as she refuses to is more proof than the noises that drift from beyond the door.

She freezes for an instant, hurt but common sense takes precedence and she returns, unemotional and cold. He is not the first lord to take a lover and neither will he be the last.

She takes pity on the girl cowering before her feet and nods in understanding. The quailing refuses to fade and neither does the obsequious kow-tow of the girl.

There is a strange feeling in her heart as she sees him the next morning. It is faintly hot and churns like a bad case of indigestion.

He is the same charming man he was yesterday, and goes about with his polite but unassuming conversation with her about the event. If he wonders at the cool formality of her manner, he does not comment.

She asks with a sudden spurt of warmth if he had talked to her father last night, knowing full well he hadn't. Encouraged by her warmth, he responds that the last time he had talked to her father was.. there was a slight pause and guilty shifting of his eyes.. a month back.

_To no doubt complain about his wife being a faithless woman,_ a snide voice whispered blackly in her mind. That was when it erupted, for the first time, for the only time. The sum of nearly decades' worth of rages flowed through her veins turning them to lava until she all she felt was a consuming need to _destroy._

She seethes beneath her skin, of her loss- of not becoming a Jounin, of becoming a bump in the road for the Council, of leaving her beloved team mates behind. And most of all, for being made to leave her heart behind, her Naruto behind.

It is then that Hyuga Hinata turns into the Fire Lady.

**A bumbling, elegant kunoichi decides to change herself**

She is patient. She watches in the beginning. Noticing the subtle shifts in their patterns of speech. She matches this to the subsequent shifts in alliances.

She learns quickly. Her husb- that man- decides to whisper in her ear about the political comings and goings. She learns and hates, hates, hates but learns.

She is the epitome of benevolence. Her unassuming persona draws her father in law to her; he is by then an old man- very, very aware of the vultures circling. She becomes his confidante. She learns where his skeletons are buried and through his trust, where everyone else buried theirs.

She is magnificent. News comes quickly of a marriage. This is the only news that threatens to break her in the way nothing and no one has before.

Uzumaki Naruto weds Haruno Sakura.

She is thankfully enjoying a tranquil evening in the company of singing crickets when she receives the news. She doesn't let herself weep.

Instead, she tells herself that if she cannot become his wife, she will become a comrade that he can always count on. Because in her heart of hearts, she knew she was his comrade before she was his friend.

**into one of the most ruthless political players across the nations.**

It has been many, many years since she had set foot in Konoha. There were many, many changes thanks to the Rokudaime and she, Hinata Hyuga, gawks with the wonder of a child. It is her who spends the evening chatting companionably with her former teammates and her friends. The evening becomes a treasure within the confines of her mind, one that will be cherished for years to come, for uncomplicated simplicity of it all.

The morning of the wedding dawns.

The Fire Lady attends the wedding. She is appropriately attired so that she doesn't eclipse the bride. She watches the procession with cool, dispassionate eyes. She smiles at all the right places and charms the people who remember that she loved him into forgetting their questions. She is just as dispassionate in her observation when she notes the dull glint in the bride's smile that is all the more painful for the sun-blinding smile from her husband.

When the Hokage invites them to a private drinking session, she claims she is tired and retires to her room to allow herself the reprieve of becoming Hinata Hyuga for the last time.

Sakura drops in, a few hours later, with a tea that would soothe away the "pains of her journey". She politely thanks her for her assistance and does not answer the questions in her eyes. They chatter amicably about nothing at all and Sakura leaves claiming exhaustion, the questions in her eyes deliberately unanswered.

After she is gone, a black smile twists about her lips and she- with gleeful vindication- drops it into the washroom without second thought.

They leave after the journey in two days.

She speaks to her father again in the meantime. But this time, their eyes match in both bitterness and ice. There is shock as he sees her own and there is unease in her sister's eyes. She decides to keep the visit short.

She sits next to the stranger-husband she has been saddled with and does not speak for the entirety of the journey. When they draw to an inn, he offers solace in the only ever honest gesture he makes towards her. They sleep hand in hand like children.

Morning creeps in and he is gone and there is a note on the pillow asking her to ready herself as soon as she could.

The months pass by, measured on the growth of her children and her father in law's failing health. She sits beside him in the final few days, never leaving his side.

As he dies, he asks her to take care of his son. An intentional slight that showed he favored her, a woman over his own son.

There is a mockery of a smile on his lips and she banishes the apparition of the man who held her hand into the depths of her mind.

The real war begins now, her mind claims in anticipatory glee.

Soon enough, there were gifts for both her and the departed Daimyo. Hers were to seek and appeal for favor and the daimyo's were the traditional gifts that the Konoha Royals were buried with so that they could use them in the next life.

She held more prominence now than she did, seated behind her husband who was in turn sitting behind his father. She sits on the balcony that faces the court, veiled by crimson gauze. She is more powerful now than she had ever been in her life and she couldn't care, she laughed to herself.

Until the issues related to Konoha came.

They were at a deadlock, she and her husband.

No matter she was wedded to the man, no matter they had children together. They were at an impasse.

An impasse she was determined to not lose. Perhaps it was time to remind her husband that he married a kunoichi and she does with the impassive eyes of the Fire Lady and the disdain of a kunoichi.

He smiles then, _her_ brittle smile. He understands but he won't back down.

A smidgen of respect smears itself in the blackened page of the book she has written for this life.

But that respect comes at a price.

A few months later, the widow of the Fire Lord, stands at court. There are black gauze curtains that shield her from view. All of the Fire Lord's cousins kneel before her, swearing complete allegiance.

The Fire Lady smiles her dispassionate smile and accepts their lies with old, old eyes.

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Wow! Just Wow! This fic just yanked me by brain and didn't let go until I finished it in the end. Did I mention, I didn't want to stop!

I've never written Dark!Hinata before. This was such a learning experience.

As always, do let me what you think.

Aurora.


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